7 ms·

I guess I don't understand what this has in terms of appeal over say a Mastodon. Mastodon of course is famous for being decentralized, and not much else. Also

I guess I don't understand what this has in terms of appeal over say a Mastodon. Mastodon of course is famous for being decentralized, and not much else. Also not sure why they had to invent a new protocol from scratch? Am I missing something?

PandawanFr 4y ago
web3 reinventing the wheel once again
jrm4 4y ago
Not sure if this solves it, but as a relatively heavy twitter user and as someone who REALLY would like an e.g. Mastodon to succeed, the lack of something like a universal handle and an easy way to follow them and find people you're into is 100% why Mastodon just ain't it. A blockchain is a 'not crazy' potential solution?
- Spivak 4y ago
  Huh? Your universal handle is yourusername@your.domain, you can follow anyone on any instance (moderation polices of your chosen instance notwithstanding). Search I get, decentralized search is hard without centralizing because you can’t even know all the Mastadon instances that exist. Just like email Mastadon is open federation.
  - tensor 4y ago
    Search can always be provided like it is for the web. Third party indexing servers that crawl the network. That's ok, even good maybe.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    Well, email is used by some, and there's no search or big directories. Isolated communities that hear about each other by diffusion is not a bad idea.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      Right. But that's a completely different thing from twitter.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Yes. I think you're probably saying better what I meant to say -- though again, even the "one username" thing makes things much easier. I suppose what Mastodon unfortunately misses is that "microblogging" ain't like email: it's supposed to be done publicly -- so, unlike email where you're likely to have a small group of people who mostly know each other -- immediate identification of "who's talking" is far more important?
- palata 4y ago
  For anything to be a universal handle, you need everything to support it. Will every single project start using this protocol? Probably not. So it won't be a universal handle, just another account.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Before blockchain was the only thing anybody wanted to talk about, there were other systems that divided up trust between parties into dimensions, such that establishing whether a chain of events happened or not was an exercise of combining a bunch of independent facts and suppositions to come to a conclusion. One that sticks out in particular is a time service. I don't know who April is, and I don't know if you're April. All I know is that someone claiming to be April sent a message intended for an alleged Barbara at 11:34:23 PDT this morning. That's all anybody trusts me to do, and that's all I claim to do. We could divorce identity from these chat services in a similar way, but we keep making the mistake of trying to positively ID people like you would for a court case, and that's not what's needed most of the time. All we need for the happy path is a way to verify that you are the same person who claimed to be this identity a month ago, instead of someone impersonating you. The problem is that if it's free to create identities, then people can use it to do astroturfing or false flag situations. Vetting is a big place where things fall down because vetting and adoption fight each other in an arena called Instant Gratification. Also we haven't instilled the same sort of Stranger Danger on the internet that GenX and GenY got spoonfed about public spaces since they were old enough to talk.
lukew3 4y ago
My first thoughts are that it's very similar to Mastodon, but has a better chance at gaining traction because its supported by Dorsey and his influential friends.
bragr 4y ago
Just skimming the docs, it seems like Mastodon built on top of DIDs to me: https://atproto.com/guides/overview https://atproto.com/guides/overview
RajT88 4y ago
I tried mastodon once for a while, and aside from finding an instance filled with totally garbage people, it was OK. I didn't love the UI, or how federation worked or anything really. For its chosen mechanics, it had good polish. The people that love it, love it not for its ease of use. But because it's OK for being decentralized and you can (more or less) have one pane of glass for your tech news, social media, and barking mad conspiracy forums filled with crazy people, degenerates and war criminals. If anyone thinks this sounds like an endorsement, don't talk to me ever.
insane_dreamer 4y ago
Mastodon is great. The only problem is hardly anyone uses it.
kornhole 4y ago
Mastodon and the dozen or so other fediverse projects are free which means they are not advertised and promoted. I have a personal rule not to buy anything that is advertised. So this is great for me. The masses don't know about it and probably never will. Some of us are fine with that as it keeps our instances manageable with participants generally smarter than average.

PandawanFr 4y ago

web3 reinventing the wheel once again

jrm4 4y ago

Not sure if this solves it, but as a relatively heavy twitter user and as someone who REALLY would like an e.g. Mastodon to succeed, the lack of something like a universal handle and an easy way to follow them and find people you're into is 100% why Mastodon just ain't it. A blockchain is a 'not crazy' potential solution?

Spivak 4y ago
Huh? Your universal handle is yourusername@your.domain, you can follow anyone on any instance (moderation polices of your chosen instance notwithstanding). Search I get, decentralized search is hard without centralizing because you can’t even know all the Mastadon instances that exist. Just like email Mastadon is open federation.
- tensor 4y ago
  Search can always be provided like it is for the web. Third party indexing servers that crawl the network. That's ok, even good maybe.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  Well, email is used by some, and there's no search or big directories. Isolated communities that hear about each other by diffusion is not a bad idea.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    Right. But that's a completely different thing from twitter.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Yes. I think you're probably saying better what I meant to say -- though again, even the "one username" thing makes things much easier. I suppose what Mastodon unfortunately misses is that "microblogging" ain't like email: it's supposed to be done publicly -- so, unlike email where you're likely to have a small group of people who mostly know each other -- immediate identification of "who's talking" is far more important?
palata 4y ago
For anything to be a universal handle, you need everything to support it. Will every single project start using this protocol? Probably not. So it won't be a universal handle, just another account.
hinkley 4y ago
Before blockchain was the only thing anybody wanted to talk about, there were other systems that divided up trust between parties into dimensions, such that establishing whether a chain of events happened or not was an exercise of combining a bunch of independent facts and suppositions to come to a conclusion. One that sticks out in particular is a time service. I don't know who April is, and I don't know if you're April. All I know is that someone claiming to be April sent a message intended for an alleged Barbara at 11:34:23 PDT this morning. That's all anybody trusts me to do, and that's all I claim to do. We could divorce identity from these chat services in a similar way, but we keep making the mistake of trying to positively ID people like you would for a court case, and that's not what's needed most of the time. All we need for the happy path is a way to verify that you are the same person who claimed to be this identity a month ago, instead of someone impersonating you. The problem is that if it's free to create identities, then people can use it to do astroturfing or false flag situations. Vetting is a big place where things fall down because vetting and adoption fight each other in an arena called Instant Gratification. Also we haven't instilled the same sort of Stranger Danger on the internet that GenX and GenY got spoonfed about public spaces since they were old enough to talk.

lukew3 4y ago

My first thoughts are that it's very similar to Mastodon, but has a better chance at gaining traction because its supported by Dorsey and his influential friends.

bragr 4y ago

Just skimming the docs, it seems like Mastodon built on top of DIDs to me: https://atproto.com/guides/overview https://atproto.com/guides/overview

RajT88 4y ago

I tried mastodon once for a while, and aside from finding an instance filled with totally garbage people, it was OK. I didn't love the UI, or how federation worked or anything really. For its chosen mechanics, it had good polish. The people that love it, love it not for its ease of use. But because it's OK for being decentralized and you can (more or less) have one pane of glass for your tech news, social media, and barking mad conspiracy forums filled with crazy people, degenerates and war criminals. If anyone thinks this sounds like an endorsement, don't talk to me ever.

insane_dreamer 4y ago

Mastodon is great. The only problem is hardly anyone uses it.

kornhole 4y ago

Mastodon and the dozen or so other fediverse projects are free which means they are not advertised and promoted. I have a personal rule not to buy anything that is advertised. So this is great for me. The masses don't know about it and probably never will. Some of us are fine with that as it keeps our instances manageable with participants generally smarter than average.